Mid-South Sculpture Alliance, a non-profit organization that aims to promote the creation, awareness and understanding of sculpture nationwide, brings its conference to Knoxville, TN. October 4th – 7th.

In collaboration with the University of Tennessee Knoxville Sculpture Program, Knoxville Museum of Art, Dogwood Arts Festival, Knoxville Arts & Culture Alliance, and Pretentious Glass, the 3-day conference will feature a wide range of indoor and outdoor exhibitions, workshops, demonstrations, small group mentoring, speakers, and panels. This exciting conference brings some of the nation’s foremost experts and talents in the field of sculpture to Knoxville. Of particular note are the conference keynote address by Chakaia Booker, and presentations by Elizabeth Turk, and Mary Bates Neubauer.

Chakaia Booker is a world renown sculptor who fusesecological concerns with explorations of racial and economic difference, globalization, and gender by recycling discarded tires into complex assemblages. Chakaia Booker’s sculptures and prints will be on exhibition during the conference.

Elizabeth Turk is an artist, primarily known for marble sculpture using traditional and digital carving processes. Turk’s work searches the boundaries of paradox: the contemporary in the traditional, the lightness in weight, the emptiness in mass, the fluidity of the solid, extended time in a moment.

Mary Bates Neubauer has shown her sculptures and prints widely including several interactive sculptural works involving light and sound. Neubauer’s artistic process focuses on the hidden aspects of our surroundings, emphasizing artistic and tactile ways of understanding global and metropolitan functions based on data visualization.